


Sacrifice

by dishonestdreams



Series: Scribblers Challenge [3]
Category: The Broken Earth Series - N. K. Jemisin
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Future Character Death, Future Fic, Gen, Implied Relationships, Post-Canon, Sea Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 10:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20190562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dishonestdreams/pseuds/dishonestdreams
Summary: The world may have ended for the last time, but that doesn't mean it's a safe place.  A different threat is still a threat, and the cost of survival has not become any less with time.





	Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Third (also super late) installment in the Scribbler's Challenge. This ficlet needed to be at least 500 words, for a fandom we had not previously written (or had not written in at least twelve months), for the prompt _We watched as they spread through the countryside. Or finding an artefact_. I...kinda went with both halves of that.
> 
> Also claimed as the next installment of my one hundred fandoms challenge!
> 
> Unbeta'd as ever; all mistakes are mine, all mine.

The world was saved.

But that’s not true. The world was never in danger. The world had been hurting, torn apart both literally and figuratively, but it was never under any grave threat. Instead, it had turned that hurt in on itself and spat it back out as rage. Nassun respects that, she, after all, can understand how hurt can twist and reform into shimmering shards of pain and fury. That’s irrelevant though; the world had not needed to be saved. From that perspective, the world had been fine. The _people_ crawling insect-like across the face of it, those had been the ones in danger.

Most of them will never know how close they came. Most of them just think of the Rifting as another season. The final season, as it turned out, but still just another trial to be endured. Because of Nassun, because of her mother, the _people_ were saved. Nassun had saved everyone, she’d chosen life, but not until after it had cost her everything and everyone that had ever mattered.

It is, she thinks, particularly cruel that that particular sacrifice should have bought them so little. To have taken that much, Nassun had expected that at least her lifetime should pass in peace. A rest, long enough at least for a generation or two to forget how harsh the earth could be, to grow lazy, soft and complacent in their comforts. 

Instead, the first monster had crawled from the ocean depths after less than five years. Not even time for the Rifting season to have finished, although the skies had finally begun to clear. People had begun to hope. Then they had come, one at first, and then tens, hundreds, _thousands_. Nassun had been in Rennanis for a while by then, partially due to Tonkee’s insistence, and partially because she had had nowhere else to go. The first news to arrive from the coast had been descriptive at most, informative but not necessarily a warning, and had garnered little interest from Ykka’s governing council other than as a potential new source of food and most of the discussion had been around the options to explore for trade agreements.

In a tavern later that night, Nassun had heard a lorist spin an inspired tale about a mighty battle between the creature and the heroic and ultimately victorious coasters. The other patrons had whooped and applauded as the tale had climaxed at the conquest. Nassun, sitting alone at a recessed corner table, had thought about the names of the fallen, those who had perished before the monster in the tale had finally been bested, and she had wondered.

Steel had been waiting in Nassun’s quarters when she had returned to them. She had said nothing, just watched him for a long moment. Finally, he had shifted, positioning himself as though he was looking directly inside her head.

“Not yet,” he had said. And then he had been gone.

He’s behind her now, Nassun can tell, but he’s quiet. Nothing to say, perhaps, or not the right time to say it. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. Over the last half-dozen cycles of the moon, as word has come less frequently and with more desperation from comms further and further inland, he has been appearing more and more often, but he has never seen fit to explain his visits. All he says to Nassun now, all he ever says, is ‘not yet’.

The wind blows over her; chilling against her bare skin, carrying with it an aroma of salt and decay that makes her wrinkle her nose, and she shivers. It’s been less than one full cycle of the moon since the first shadows were spotted on the horizon and Nassun has made it a habit to visit the walls at sundown. She’s tracked them creeping forward over the land, darkness spreading like a bruise blooming across skin. Based on their speed so far, she estimates that they’ll reach the walls of Rennanis the day after tomorrow at the latest.

And then it will end, one way or another. Nassun suspects the outcome will not be as merry for the people of Rennanis as it was in that first lorist’s epic tale.

She hears footsteps on the wall behind her, but she doesn’t turn. Ykka’s council has been meeting throughout the day, and Nassun is both old enough and young enough to have expected to be part of their discussions. One way or another. Besides, she followed these feet halfway across the world; even if she couldn’t feel their arrival, she recognises the cadence of those steps.

“Nassun,” Hjarka says, from over Nassun’s right shoulder, her voice low, “We need to talk.”

On Nassun’s left, Tonkee lets out a snort. “She means that she needs to talk, and you need to listen,” she says, derisively, “Since the _council_ has already decided what needs to happen.”

“Tonkee,” Hjarka says, warningly, “You’re not helping.”

“I’m not trying to,” Tonkee says flatly, and there’s an ugly twist to her words that galvanise Nassun to movement. She doesn’t want to be the cause of friction between the two of them. She turns, her left hand coming out instinctively to rest against Tonkee’s shoulder.

“It’s alright,” she says. The look Tonkee shoots her is equal parts flatly unhappy and dismissively scornful.

“You don’t know what they want from you,” she says, unhappiness winning out in her tone, and Nassun shakes her head.

“The obelisks,” she says, and Hjarka’s mouth also twists unhappily.

“If there was another way, we would,” she says. “But we’ve been looking, and…”

“There’s no-one else,” Nassun finishes the thought for her. It’s true; Nassun has spent the last three moons searching the comm for any orogene with even a glimmer of the right potential, Steel following her like a silent shadow, but she’s found nothing. Those with even a fraction of the intellect to grasp the ideas don’t have the capability, and those with enough potential ability can barely control themselves, let alone anything more.

Tonkee throws her hands up in the air, exasperatedly. “This is rusting insane! The obelisks are gone; we _watched them deconstruct_. Even I don’t know how we put those things back together and I’ve been studying them for years.”

“I can do it,” Nassun says, calm to her own ears, and Hjarka lets out a slow exhale.

“Are you sure?” she asks and, at Tonkee’s glare, she shrugs. “We need to know.”

“I’m sure,” Nassun says.

“For earth’s sake!” Tonkee blurts out. “Can you both hear yourselves? You’re talking about this like it’s a supply run to a neighbouring comm. If you do this, Nassun, you’re going to _die_.”

“If I don’t,” Nassun says, “Then everyone will die. I made my choice about that already.”

Tonkee stares at her. “Essun didn’t want this for you,” she says, eventually, and that, _that_ is enough to crack through Nassun’s calm façade. She flinches.

“My mother didn’t want a lot of things,” she says, and the words hurt as they come out, the consonants scraping against her throat like shards of gravel. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.”

“It’s not-“

Nassun holds up her arm, the one already missing a hand, and Tonkee’s mouth shuts on her own sentence with a distinct snap. Even in the darkness, there’s enough light from the moon to clearly see the shift in the skin halfway down her forearm. Smooth to rough, soft to hard, gleaming to dull. Nassun can feel the ache in her shoulder from the extra weight of a forearm half-formed of stone, but she ignores it. It won’t matter for long. “I already called the onyx,” she says and behind her there’s a rasp of stone on stone.

“Now,” Steel says, and the word resonates with the finality of a sealed tomb.


End file.
